I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep track of my adsense earnings. While looking at this month's number or last number's earnings are nice, I'd like to keep an eye on how my numbers are improving, so I've begun downloading all the numbers by channel and overall. But I'm having trouble deciding on the best way to look for trends. Do people here look for trends day to day, week to week, month to month, or what? Do you use a rolling average, or just look at the numbers wholesale? Which stats do you look at, earnings, clicks, earnings per click, CTR, or eCPM? Also, what graphs do you look at? I've been looking at earnings per channel, but that doesn't show me trends, just the overall numbers.
I usually go via the month to month basis. I'll change the locations of my ad blocks each month and compare results at months end. Is kinda hard for me to gage what block positioning works best because my site is new and growing. I Have had my best ctr this month, so will maintain current block placement and see if it continues.
Since I'm still fairly new at this, I tend to look at the 7 day rolling average. It seems to give me a good idea of when 'interesting' things have happened. I was placed at no 1 for a good keyword for three weeks. I was loving life for a little while, but then it faded. But I can really see when that spiked and when it faded using the 7 day averages.... Anyone else?
when i covered a particular scandal involving a video, my traffic was high and the CTR was encouraging, however now its back to square one
I have been tracking the daily summary data so that I can calculate the average click rate each day. I track daily average income by month and I track daily average income by the day of the week. I keep last year's data separate from this year. I think I will probably start to break it down by quarter as well. I just use an spreadsheet to track the data and do the calculations.
I use Adsense Gold. It allows you to track clicks. Which ads they clicked and the style of ad and alot more. The amount of information you gain from it is amazing and it is usable with YPN also. With the information you gain you can simply make adjustments to your website and see what really works and what does not.
Well, I usually track adsense stuff using graphs in excel, but I was just wondering how others like to do it. Since I have a lot of variation in my numbers, I just have a hard time keeping track of whether things are improving. Clancey: I was tracking ctr daily averages, but I noticed that when I used my all time data or just went month to month, I wasn't sure if my CTR was very low, compared to what I thought I should be getting now. That's why I moved to viewing by one week.